Many people choose to purchase a particular item due to the aesthetic and fashionable qualities of the item. This is particularly true for fashionable and home decor items, such as bags, purses, frames, pillows, sheets, blankets, lampshades, items of apparel, and more. Professional designers offer high-end items with unique designs based on aesthetic and fashionable trends, often at a very high cost to a consumer. Even when a consumer purchases an item designed to be fashionable, the consumer often feels the desire to customize the item, making it a truly unique design with the consumer's creative contribution.
A consumer that wishes to customize an item typically must permanently alter or damage the item. This is because the consumer is forced to stitch, adhere, screw, or create a hole to pin the customization to the item, thereby permanently altering and/or damaging the item in some way. Moreover, stitches, adhesives, and holes have the potential to destroy the item, which can make it very difficult for the consumer to resell or return the item to recover the original amount paid for the item. Further, by installing a permanent customization to the item, the consumer lacks the ability to easily and efficiently change the customization, such as by moving the customization to another portion of the item, or by installing an entirely new customization.
Magnetic customization devices currently exist, but they are not widely used. In order to minimize cost and reduce the space needed, the devices tend to be small. Moreover, while the devices may include magnet assemblies, the magnets used in the devices tend to be weak, due to the small size of the devices. If larger and/or stronger magnets are used, the resulting structure sticks out from the surfaces to which it is attached. As a result, the devices are easy to hit or bump and are easily dislodged and detached from fashionable items. In particular, this is a problem when the device is used in conjunction with a purse or a bag, because a user may easily detach the back of the device from the purse or bag by reaching into the purse or bag to retrieve a different item, such as a set of keys or a cellular phone. When the back of the device detaches, the customization detaches from the fashionable item, potentially causing the customization to fall and become lost, damaged, or broken. This is a particular problem when expensive customizations are used, such as jewelry or artistic pieces. Moreover, larger and/or stronger magnets may create a magnetic field that can be damaging to items housed within a bag or purse, such as keys, cellular phones, and credit cards.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.